Quotes About Songwriting

I'm not going to hurt anybody other than that dick who keeps writing songs about me.

We'd have made more, but I kept forgetting to write songs down.

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

You kinda don't know what's going to make a good song. You've got to shoot around in the dark for a little while.

When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.

We try to write the best songs ever and they kinda come out funny.

That's kinda what happened to me: I listened to jazz, country, R&B, rock 'n' roll. And when I sat down to write a song, I had all these influences comin' through.

We'll set up a demo session and try to knock out eight or ten songs and make them sound as close as we can to a record with the money and time we have.

You don't plan 'La la la's.' They just pop out. Bowie and Marc Bolan littered many of their songs with 'La la's.'

I decided the world was filled with plenty of good guitar players, many of them my match or better, but how many good songwriters were there?

Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.

It's hard for me to see myself as meaningful, but people seem to like my music, so who knows. Maybe my music is empowering some more young women to pick up songwriting/playing.

'Linger' was the first song I wrote after joining the Cranberries. I was 18, and the youngest member of the band was 16 at the time. We never imagined it'd be such a big hit.

'I'm Yours' was written effortlessly in about 20 minutes' time, and I honestly thought it was more of like a kids' song, and I didn't do anything with it for years.

If you have a soft chin you can write an amazing song about me that involves an alien from my favorite movie, and then I'm yours.

Lyric writing is an interesting process in Sonic Youth. There's three people writing now, and we've all had a lot of interest and involvement with expression through words.

I had the lyric 'Chip Don't Go' and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I'd finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn't realize it was going to take off like it did.

Anytime someone basically commissions a piece, I write a song based on something personal to them. I go online and I do research on that person - Wikipedia, YouTube interviews, anywhere I can find a piece of information that kind of tugs at your heart a little bit.

I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.

It is true I've written songs for other performers; I've worked with Tricky, Tears for Fears, A1, HearSay among others.

The tricky thing about songwriting is that, more often than not, what you consider to be your best work generates a collective shrug, and something you've simply tossed off bowls people over.

I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.

The first song that I remember writing in its entirety was when I was 9 years old. I wrote it on a bus, on a field trip. It was called 'Mystery Man,' and in retrospect, it was the beginning of my exploration of what it was like to have a man in your life, because I didn't.

I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.